There is a strong tradition in the visual arts of introspection, critique and performative behaviour. While hierarchies, dependencies and structures of the institutional apparatus (often represented as The Museum or The Gallery) have been frequently critiqued and examined by visual artists as part of their practice, artists seldom turn their gaze on themselves as propagators and contributors of cultural traditions within the increasingly globalised art world(s).
Juliane Zelwies has drawn attention to this blind spot by exploring and developing approaches to describe, analyse and understand the artist ́s habitus (i.e. beliefs, codes and behaviour) that she and her colleagues express in professional and informal settings. She has been particularly interested in examining situations in which artists seem to violate unwritten rules or conventions and their peers ́ response to such violations.
Her artistic research project Reading out loud consists of a series of posters, video works, an artist book and a set of public readings. While the poster series Words of Mouth is based on quotes which Juliane collected at various informal occasions from her peers and other art professionals, the video OFF THE RECORD examines the identity artists have of themselves and their working environment more methodically. The artist book artistic research has been written in the form of a script from Juliane’s memories of a summer academy for artistic research that was held on the island of Utøya. Other versions of the text have been presented publicly, providing an insight into the struggle with the text and the changes and edits it went through before eventually becoming a work of fiction.
Reading out loud is Juliane Zelwies´ PhD project in artistic research at the The Art Academy at the University of Bergen in collaboration with UiT The Arctic University of Norway, Academy of Arts.
About the artist
In her audio- and video-installations, short films and lecture performances, Juliane Zelwies explores the psychology of social interaction, particularly with regard to (human) communication. Visually at home in the ambiguous borderland between documentary and dramatisation, much of her work relies on an exchange with expert groups and individuals, with whom she looks into the construction and deconstruction of narratives.
Juliane Zelwies (born 1976, Berlin) studied Sculpture and Film in Stockholm and Philadelphia and holds an MFA (equivalent) in Media Art from the Universität der Künste Berlin. She has lectured at various art schools, including UiT in Tromsø, and curates exhibitions and film programmes. Her work is shown internationally in exhibitions and film festivals. Her video works are distributed by Arsenal - Institute for Film and Video Art, Berlin. She held a position as a research fellow at UiT The Arctic University of Norway, Academy of Arts (Norwegian Artistic Research Fellowship programme) in Norway.
Juliane Zelwies lives and works in Tromsø, Norway and Berlin, Germany.